


Silent fell the Cannon Shells.

by TayBartlett9000



Category: Blackadder
Genre: 1918, Armistice, Gen, Hope, The End, World War 1, november - Freeform, surrender, written for rememberence day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-11
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-08-22 01:10:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16587872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TayBartlett9000/pseuds/TayBartlett9000
Summary: It is November the eleventh, 1918. Edmund Blackadder gets  a message from Melchit and at first doesn't believe that the war against Germany is finally over. But it is a bitter sweet victory.Written for  rememberence day, an important day in our world's history that should never be forgotten.





	Silent fell the Cannon Shells.

Silent Fell the Cannon Shells.

 

 

Edmund Blackadder    crouched in the darkness of the trenches, shivering in the icey wind that blew in from beyond their hiding place. He sat unmoving, waiting for who knew not and listening with only half an ear to the sounds of George and Baldrick chattering about everything and nothing in the trench behind him. Their animated voices were grating on his nerves as he sat there, gun in hand as he watched the entrance of their trench.

The November wind was sharp against his cheeks,  the chill snaking down his back as a thin sheet of rain trickled down from the iron grey sky. In the distance, Blackadder could hear the tell-tale rumble of gunfire as the allies faught it out to the bitter end. Those sounds no longer brought him any thoughts of glory.  Now that he had been over the  top, those sounds brought only terror, terror that he might be sent out again. And this time, he would be unable to do anything to prevent it. They had been over the top only once, and once had been more than enough. They had stood face to face with the German army and had fired upon them, killing far too few of the enemy soldiers and only just surviving themselves.

“Fancy a cup of tea Captain Blackadder?” Baldrick asked cherrfully, coming to stand at Edmund Blackadder’s side and proffering him a cup of something brown and mud-like. 

Shaking his head, Blackadder sighed heavily. “No,  Baldrick, it doesn’t look very  tasty,” he replied calmly and without emotion. He turned away from Baldrick and fixed his gaze once again at the entrance to  their trench. His gun was still held tightly in his hand, a hand that had grown stiff with cold. He thought privately that someone would soon find him incased in ice in the bottom of the shallow trench and would  have to  prize the gun  from his hand should they wish to  fight with it.

George appeared at Blackadder’s left side, face bright with a smile that Blackadder secretly wanted to smack off his face. “I say, sir,” George was saying, “did you see Charlie Chaplain’s new film? Oh god. It was so funny I thought I’d die.” He collapsed into waves of laughter as Edmund Blackadder watched him with an inscrutable expression.

As George continued to roar with laughter, now sprawled on the muddy ground, Blackadder frowned. The man seemed to have   forgotten the horrors that they  had been living through for the past year since he and his small group had ventured over the top. George seemed to have pulled through the hardship and emerged  from the horrors in a far better state than Blackadder had. Blackadder  didn’t want to admit jealousy on his part, but that was what he felt. George and Baldrick, perhaps because of their obvious lack of intelligence, had easily adjusted to life now that they had tasted and experienced the  trials of war.

If only Edmund  Blackadder could do the same. But he  could not. Every  night when he prepared  for sleep, He  hoped that this  night would be the first without the  terrible dreams that had stalked him since  that advance over the top. But evrry night as his eyes closed ans sleep  pounced on him, he had been proven wrong. Woefully wrong. The sounds of the cannon shells exploded inside his mind and woke him repeatedly. Captain Darling had already been sent back to Blighty with a nasty case of shell shock, and  Blackadder dearly wished that  they could have sent him home as well. If he had been put on a ship  bound for Blighty, he would have escaped the relentless  explosions, the bitter cold and the harsh living. He would have given anything to have made that dream a reality.

“Do you want to play a game of I spy,  Lieutenant George?”  Baldrick was asking now, voice still filled with that unstoppable inthusiasm that was so grating for Blackadder.

 Getting up off the muddy floor and smoothing down his uniform, George nodded eagerly. “Ok  then, Balders,” he agreed, “I’ll start. I spy with my little eye, something beginning with s.”

Baldrick  thought this question through  for  only a second  before saying with joy, “soldiers?”

George shook his head. “No, wrong answer.”

Blackadder listened in silence as ten thirty  drew ever nearer. Ten thirty in the morning and there were still far too many hours to go before the blessed silence would fall once  more.

x.

General Anthony Cecil  Hogminay Melchit had known many a moment of victory in his life, but as the orders were signalled through from London, he shouted his   jubilation to  anyone who cared to listen.

“What’s wrong, sir?” Bob asked, racing through to Melchit’s  office as she heard the jubilant cries ringing through the entire building.

Melchit was standing by the  window, looking out over the fields of Belgium  with a smile on his face.  He almost didn’t notice the snow falling down from the slate grey sky. He almost didn’t pay attention to the fact that the people around him were    literally  crying with excitement  but as Bob made  her way across to him,  he did notice her shout.

“Oh, hello Bob,” he said brightly, looking down at his  driver who was standing at his side, “did you not  hear?”

“Hear what sir?” she asked with a hint of nervousness.

“The war’s over, Bob. Can you believe it?” He smiled down at Bob and added, “the Germans have surrendered. The guns are going to fall silent at eleven o’clock this morning. Can you believe that?”

Bob shook her head in complete incredulity. “Oh, sir,” she said in auh, “that means we can go home? Doesn’t it?”

Melchit nodded. “Indeed it does, Bob. I’m going to phone the men out in the trenches and make sure that they know all about the end.”

x.

When the phone rang, Blackadder felt his heart sinking as if he had a mettle elephant lodged in his soul. What was about to happen now? Had they been given some more marching orders? He didn’t think he could take any more killing. They had had four years of this.

Picking up the phone, he said, “yes, if you’re asking us to go over the top, you can forget it. I’m not doing that again.” He almost berated himself for his own insubordination, but found that in fact, he cared very little.

The voice at the other end caused his heart to sink. It was General Melchit. Again. Nothing that this man had to say was ever anything good.  “Helllo Blackadder,” he said in the tone of  ignorant joy that Blackadder wished he could extinguish by means of strangulation,  “I have something to tell you, something that I think you need to know.”  

Blackadder frowned. “Of course you do, sir,” he said flatly, “what is it?”

Melchit took a deep breath and imparted the information that had been imparted to him. “The war is over, Blackadder. The armistice has been signed and the guns  are going to stop  firing at eleven  this morning.”

Blackadder sat for a few seconds with the phone to his ear, unsure whether he had just heard that sentence correctly. Of course, he had wished for four years to hear that very sentence spoken. He had picked up that same phone every time and hoped that one of the higher ups would say that the Germans had decided to ‘call it a day’ as Melchit often put it. But now he wasn’t sure if he believed what his commander had said.

“Did you hear me Blackadder?” Melchit asked loudly, rather as if he was wasting his time imparting information to someone who was both dim-witted and hard of hearing.

Pullinghimself together, Blackadder cleared his throat and said, “sorry, sir.” He glanced behind him to where George and Baldrick were sitting in silence, evidently listening to what he was saying. He returned his attention and said for their benefit, “so the war’s over, is it?”

The cheer that irrupted behind him caused Blackadder to jump slightly. Baldrick started to applaud and Lieutenant George cheered. “The bloody war’s bloody over, well tally bally ho.”  

“We can go home,” Baldrick said joyfully, “thank the lord. We can go home. The war is over.”

But Blackadder did not join in with their merriment. “Thank you  General Melchit,”   he said calmly, putting the phone down and lapsing into silent thought.

Why  was he not rapturously happy like the men whom he  was sharing a trench with? He listened to the cheers and revelry that Baldrick and George were partaking in, wondering why the information hadn’t awoke the same feelings  within himself. He sat in quiet   contemplation,  waiting for the guns to fall silent.  Only minutes remained. He  was less than half an hour away from being a free man, one of the survivers of the war that had been named ‘The Great War,’  and he wasn’t at all sure what to think.  

He sat and waited as the mixture of cheers and   relentless gunfire continued on around him. He was in a daze. Blackadder knew that they had triumphed. He knew that they were   the victors in the war that had taken far too many men. The  Germans had thrown down their weapons and surrendered, and that surely was a good thing. As the time ticked onward,  bringing the world closer and closer to that glorious hour of  freedom, he smiled sadly. The hour had come and he  was one of the survivors, but as he looked over the top to where he could still see bodies littering the ground, his smile vanished from his face. It was apparent that those in power were determined to keep the war going  until the final second, even though he was sure that everyone knew the war was rapidly drawing to a close. So even as the hour of eleven chimed, men were continuing to fall in the name of war.

But the inevitable hour of eleven o’clock arrived and in that single moment, the guns and cannon shells fell silent. Blackadder patiently waited out the silence, thinking that in moments, the cheers that were reverberating around his trench would soon be echoing through the fields of no man’s land.

 But the cheers never came.   Silence  prevailed despite the fact that the world did have a great deal to cheer about.  Blackadder smiled ironically. Clearly many were of a similar mind. No one was really sure whether the war’s end should be celebrated, commemorated or commiserated.

In  a way,   Blackadder supposed that  this didn’t matter. The trains would soon  arrive to take the rest of the survivors home and they would be back in Blighty before too long. The fields of war would be gratefully left   behind and they would be able to resume their   lives back in Britain, all be it with memories that many would have done anything  to  forget. But the war was over. The year of 1918 would end on a positive note. That at least was something. Not even he could have denied that.


End file.
